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The Weird Week in Review

Snow in Mexico

The snowstorm that blew through the Unites States Wednesday night also left its mark in Mexico. The border city of Ciudad Juarez closed schools and factories after it received a thin layer of snow. Abraham González International Airport closed down due to the snow. Widespread power outages affected the region, and 28 traffic accidents were reported (with no fatalities). The temperature in Ciudad Juarez was reported at 9 degrees above zero Fahrenheit- the coldest recorded temperature since 1951.

How Not to Ship a Puppy

Stacey Champion took a package to the Minneapolis Post Office and told the clerks not to worry if it moved, as it contained a toy robot. She paid $22 to ship the box to Georgia via priority mail. The package later moved and made noise. A postal inspector gave permission to open the box, which contained a four-month-old puppy! The puppy would not have survived the trip in the sealed box, which would have taken two days and a flight in an unheated cargo hold. Champion was cited for animal cruelty, and the puppy was taken to an animal shelter. Champion demanded her $22 back, which the postal service declined to refund.

Burglar Has No Luck

Do you ever have those days where everything goes wrong? That's what happened to an unnamed 19-year-old burglar in Frankston, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. His plan was to rob a bakery while it was closed for the night.

The young man broke into the shop, in the Melbourne suburb of Frankston, through a skylight and landed in a locked store room.

So he tried stacking up a number of containers on top of each other to try and climb out.

But they toppled over, throwing him to the floor.

Then he tried to climb shelves to get out, and they collapsed under him.

He fell to the floor several times, and ended up with a number of cuts and bruises.

When he discovered the security camera, he tried to cover it, but too late: his various falls were caught on camera. He eventually escaped, but when his face was publicized, he turned himself in.

Neon CRAP Sign in Idaho Neighborhood

A new glowing neon sign appeared in Nampa, Idaho around Christmas. It wasn't a holiday decoration. Large red letters spell out the word CRAP. Neighbors were surprised by the strange glowing sign on the roof of Andy's Joseph's used appliance shop. For Joseph, it was a business decision, not an opinion. He says the letters stand for "Can't Resist Andy's Place." Why such a strange acronym? The slogan came about when Joseph got a deal on an old sign from a defunct floor covering store. The sign spelled CARPET, which gave Joseph some letters he could use for a different business.

World's Oldest Person Dies

Eunice Sanborn, who outlived three husbands, was 114 years old when she passed away Monday at her home in Texas, according to caretaker David French. Or was she 115? Census records indicate Mrs. Sanborn was born on July 20, 1896, in Louisiana. Sanborn herself had always said she was born in 1895, and that the Census Bureau had made a mistake. Either way, with Sanborn's death, the oldest person in the world is now 114-year-old Besse Cooper of Georgia.

Firemen Called to Rescue Beer

A 44-year-old man in Kaiserslautern, Germany, and a friend stepped off a train for a smoke and saw the train pulled away without them. The man panicked when he realized that he had left his beer on the train. Then he did what anyone would do in an emergency -he broke the glass and pulled a fire alarm! A squad of firefighters from the Kaiserslautern Fire Department responded. The only emergency they found was an injury the man sustained while breaking the fire alarm glass. He was found to have a blood-alcohol level of .195 percent.

A Flood of Duck Feathers

While some cities are buried under snow, a road in Cambridgeshire, England only looked that way as it was covered in duck feathers. A truck carrying the feathers caught fire and spilled its load on the A14 near Hemingford Grey. The truck's diesel engine caused the fire, which burned until the truck was destroyed. Meanwhile, the load of feathers flew about, resembling a snowstorm and making the road slippery. The westbound lanes were shut down and a rolling roadblock was installed in the eastbound lanes. Motorists were advised to avoid the area.

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Also on Mental Floss:

DID YOU KNOW? Marlon Brando hated memorizing lines so much that he posted cue cards everywhere to help him get through scenes.
He even asked for lines to be written on an actress's posterior. (That request was denied.)